The Journey is the Thing

The Journey is the Thing from Tony Blazejack on Vimeo.

New York City Ghost Bike Busters

Cyclists and the rest of society have at best a strange acceptable coexistence - a symbiosis. But as any high school ecology student learns symbiosis is a bit like saying "fruit", there are many different kinds and not everyone like them all.

Commensalism is a type of relationship between two things where one benefits, but the other is unaffected (car drives on street and doesn't hit bike). There are three other relationships: mutualism (where both bikes and cars benefit), competition (where both vehicles are harmed), and parasitism (one vehicle benefits and the other one is harmed). This last versions is where ghost bikes appear on our streets.

In some cities that approaches true symbiosis, struggling as it may be, but still what might be refereed to as commensalism - when two species share the same table. In other cities the symbiosis teeters on parasitism. And parasitism always has victims.

Ghost bikes in New York City appear to remind us a wee bit too much of garbage, rather than memorials, at least according to that city's sanitation department. Ghost bikes dot the streets of many of the US and world's major city streets. They are haunting reminders of Koyaanisqatsi, life out of balance, symbiosis gone bad. 67 reminders have been put up around NY City as part of the Street Memorial Project to honor the 108 known cycling fatalities since 2005. For half a decade they have stood as silent reminders to NY residence that their streets are a shared environment, but those reminders may become distant memories if a new proposal [pdf] from the NYC Department of Sanitation is approved; part of an initiative to clear the sidewalks of unused and junked bikes, the department wants to get rid of Ghost Bikes as well.

In articles popping up around that city - both on the web and print - (Sanitation Department wants to remove 'eyesore' bike-death memorials & Ghost Bikes Targeted by Sanitation Department) - it appears ghost bikes are illustrating the divide, mental more than physical, between those that ride and those that don't. Bikes are the representation of the "them." Those people who simply will not accept that vehicles are a symbol of our manifest destiny. They are the counter-culture. It's the kind of "everyman" device that reeks of communism - or worse yet, Europeanism. And ghost bikes are blatant symbols that "we", the drivers of those steel leviathans are costing lives. Not such a pretty reminder when you put your kid on their bike in the park.

The ghost bikes may even be more haunting these days as oil and methane gas spew from the Gulf of Mexico sea floor, creating dead zones in that fruitful sea and spill toxically along hundreds of miles of Gulf coast. Their thin white frames stand in stark contrast to the giant hulks of oil hungry steel that struck most of their owners down. Bikes are one of the few clean transportation vehicles that are "pedal ready" and cost us nothing to implement - except greater patience, awareness and sharing - a greater understanding of symbiotic commensalism and of the core tenant of every belief on this planet - sharing is good.

"...leaving her in the street for dead."

I'm just outside the passenger window, in the bike lane, and watching the drivers head - not one glance my way, not a hint of considering it... I unclip the right shoe - preparing to frog leap with my bike up onto the curb. Before I can make the slightest "rrribbit", muchless hop, the rear truck wheel is coming my way - S#@&TTTTT! Holy MdG (Madonna del Ghisallo) where are you??

That was some time ago, I survived the near encounter with a bruised wrist (my frog hops aren't apparently what they use to be) and an increased distrust for 'right-turner' - that was before Portland began the green bikebox-no-right-turn project, hopefully that will increase awareness.

Others, have not been so lucky. Bikes and collisions with cars seem to be crisscrossing my life lately - earlier in the year it was "Moose", nearly killed by a driver turning across him (he is alive and recovering - not the bike); then it was Brian with the sequel to Moose's collision (different place and driver, same result); then the fall saga of Dr. Death-to-Cyclists hit the webwaves (available in painful detail on VeloNews), then Portland got its own sanctuary of the Madonna del Ghisallo, protector of cyclists and those not so lucky - kinda cool and ominous at the same time.

They say these things come in threes, or sevens, ...or elevens, I don't know. But whatever their fractally define frequency is, at some point they begin to coalesce into something that resonates, is meaningful; the critical bit for a cyclist is you just need to be listening for the music. I just finished this afternoons ride (safely) and I'm listening to the World on PRI and hear the story of Melody Gardot and damn if it isn't another one! Errrrrrgh!! This last one struck a cord - several beautiful cords - reminding me not every bike-car encounter ends in the erection of a ghostbike. It's about Gadot's collision with bad judgment and her musical rise from death's door (thank you again MdG).

As I sat there listening to the story and her sultry jazz-infused voice wafting from the speakers I was struck by conflicting images - her lifeless body and bike splayed across the Philly pavement and this incredible living voice I had never heard. Increasingly we are living in a shared world - incumbent on our ability to learn and accept sharing - of resources, religions, rights, and roads. "All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sand pile at primary school." I also learned how to ride my bike in primary school - and nobody got hurt doing it.

In addition to the World's version of Melody Gadot's story, here's Michael Nastos' summation of events and musical outcomes:
"The story of vocalist Melody Gardot is as remarkable as any who perseveres against abject adversity. Born in New Jersey in 1985, she took up piano and played as a youngster on the nightclub scene of Philadelphia, influenced by jazz, folk, rock and pop musics. At age 19 she was a fashion student at the Community College of Philadelphia. But, on a fateful day, while riding her bicycle, the driver of a Jeep made an illegal turn, hurdling into Gardot and leaving her in the street for dead. Hospitalized for months with multiple head injuries and pelvic fractures, her love for music was the best therapy she could receive. While in her hospital bed, she wrote and recorded songs that would become the EP Some Lessons. Upon her eventual release from intensive care, Gardot found the strength and determination to further her career as an artist. Blessed with a beautiful voice and grand insight as a songwriter, her cognitive powers slowly but surely became pronounced, leading to the independent recording and release of her debut CD, Worrisome Heart, which was reissued in 2007 by Verve records. Gardot is hypersensitive to light and noise, thus she wears dark glasses, and uses a cane to walk. On-stage she requires a special seating unit, and wears a Transcutaneous Electro-Nerve Stimulator, a TENS device, to assist in alleviating her neuralgic muscle pain. As amazing as her story is, what is more evident is that she possesses a blue style and persona that reflects not only her afflictions, but conversely the hope and joy of making personalized music that marks her as an individual and original. Though touring is difficult, she has been performing in major cities [in Europe and in the US] on the East Coast to support her recordings. In 2009, Gardot followed up her Verve debut with My One and Only Thrill."

Are we really haunted by ghost bikes?

A dozen ghost bikes are sadly scattered about Portland streets, and if you are reading this blog you undoubtedly see them. But does your boss? your neighbor? your boyfriend? your wife?

They always cause me pause when we cross paths. I do think of the rider(s) senselessly consumed in the impatience we inflict on our daily lives, and how often on my daily rides I have had these moments, swishes of passing danger, my presence less valuable, less important, less respected because I'm not cocooned in a four, five or six thousand pound beast that can ignore my relevance. I travel in the urban-otherland. I wish I was as secure as a side-walk bipedal, they have six or so feet of clear sailing and at worst only collided with creatures roughly their size and speed.

"My" lane is also the curbside recycling strip, delivery truck double-parking way, construction ahead sign corridor, the movie company dolly-track sector, the taxi wait station, and always, the car door opening lane. (BTW - a century plus ago ‘bipedal’ was one of the original concept names for what is now bicycle - we should have hung on to it, we might have our own six foot wide lane now!)

The Guardian news in the UK recently asked in a web clip - "Ghostly all-white bikes appear by roads where a cyclist has been killed following an accident. Do these monuments make the roads safer for other cyclists? Or are they simply tragic street art?"

I wonder the same. Do these ashen spirits of our most livable city whisper to any passersby except those that push pedals? Sure I notice, I'm on a bicycle virtually every day in one capacity or another – so that means I also engage with motorists in one capacity of another. Do visitors to our city notice? Do police notice? Do pedestrians notice? Most importantly do those who matter most notice – drivers?

And if not, then what?

How do we signal our fragility?

Perched a top less than 30lbs of steel, aluminum or carbon, we are no match for the steel leviathans of Detroit. More importantly we are no match for the attitudes wheeling the Detroitasauruses about.

So how do we get safer?

Like most solutions, one is short term, the other systemic. We need to all put our heads together on it, not just attorney Ray Thomas, Del Sharffenberg and a few others. We already have what it takes; we have a higher percentage of people who bike to work than any other large American city; we have nearly 20,000 everyday folks come out and ride the bridges every August, that’s an army; Portland is already widely considered one of the country’s most bike-friendly urban centers. That means there are a lot of people out there to work on solutions – a start is join BTA (Bicycle Transportation Alliance) and get involved beyond wearing the t-shirt or getting your 10% off at the local bike shop. There’s a lot of lip-flapping from the saddle, but not often enough do they flap their way to a transportation hearing or local council meeting.

We need more ideas like those Big Green Bike Boxes, believed to be the first such to be put to use by any city in the country, but we need to encourage Portland police to be as vigilant about warning drivers who blunder into the boxes as they do passing out stop sign violation tickets to cyclists behind OMSI.

Long-term, education – again get involved. Folks like the Community Bike Center and BTA have safety programs for kids, lit’l Newbees, and they need your passion for the bike to help these kids learn and grow into adults who both drive with respect and believe cyclists of every ilk deserve a piece of the road.

But finally it may also rest with us – the one’s on bikes – starting with “Do unto others…” We need to obey the road rules, until We change them (see article link under Legally Speaking over on Bicycling Northwest). Stop signs mean stop – period! Red lights are for us all – period! I know it’s shitty to have to unclip, kill the momentum, but motorists don’t get us, they don’t know what we’re doing (hell, neither do we half the time), and bottom line – those Detroitasauruses can kill us.

No more ghost bikes, no more ashen art pieces – let's work together for solutions – or park the cars and the bikes until we do.

The First Ghosts Were Seen…

The ghost bike idea seems to have originated with a project by San Francisco artist Jo Slota. Slota began the original ghost bike project in April 2002. This was a distinct, purely artistic endeavor. Slota was intrigued by the abandoned bicycles that he found around the city, locked up but stripped of useful parts. He began painting them white, and posted photographs on his website, ghostbike.net. As the idea was taken up for different purposes, Slota faced a dilemma. San Francisco is one of the safer U.S. cities for bicyclists, but memorial ghost bikes sprang up there as elsewhere, changing perceptions of his project.

The first ghost bike memorial project was in St. Louis, Missouri, United States in October 2003. After observing a motorist strike a bicyclist in a bike lane on Holly Hills Boulevard, Patrick Van Der Tuin placed a white-painted bicycle on the spot with a hand-painted sign reading "Cyclist Struck Here". Noticing the effect that this had on motorists in the area, Van Der Tuin then enlisted the help of friends to place 15 more "ghost bikes" in prominent spots in the St. Louis area where cyclists had recently been hit by automobiles. They used damaged bikes, in some cases deliberately damaged to create the desired mangled effect.

Today the general meaning is a ghost bike or ‘ghostcycle’ is a bicycle set up in a place where a cyclist has been hurt or killed by a motor vehicle, as a memorial and as a reminder to passing motorists to share the road. A junk bicycle is painted white, with a placard attached, and locked to a suitable light pole, post or object close to the scene of the accident. These memorials are mainly a political statement – aiming to make a wider point beyond personal loss. Not all ghost bikes commemorate real casualties: some merely reflect indignation at near-misses by careless drivers, or even protest against a poor road surface.

Portland’s ghost bikes began appearing in the summer of 2005. Similar projects began in Pittsburgh in 2004, New York City and Seattle in 2005, and Chicago in 2006. London Ghostcycle was active in 2005 and 2006. There have been similar projects in dozens of other cities worldwide. http://www.ghostbikes.org/

Above photo courtesy ghostbikes.org website

First Thursday event will feature up-and-coming bike builders

The show, hosted by the StepChange Group (500 NW 9th Ave.), is the brainchild of StepChange director of technology Michael Jones. Jones is a web developer who you might remember as the guy who created the (now defunct) stolen bike listing tool, Finetoothcog. He’s also co-founder of the Unicycle Bastards and helped get Portland’s Ghost Bike movement off the ground.

Check out details here